But as the 23-year-old Brazilian readies for a Bellator’s season-five welterweight-tourney finale against Ben Saunders, he said they soon will.

He and Saunders headline Saturday’s Bellator 57, which takes place at Casino Rama in Rama, Ontario, Canada.

The night’s main card, including Lima (20-4 MMA, 2-0 BFC) vs. Saunders (12-3-2 MMA, 3-0 BFC), airs at a special time of 7 p.m. ET/PT on MTV2 (and in high-definition on EPIX), and the prelims stream on Spike.com.

Lima punched his ticket to the eight-man tourney’s finale with a unanimous-decision victory over Steve Carl and a second-round knockout of Chris Lozano. The Lozano knockout – the result of a thundering right cross – was especially vicious. Lima, though, is slow to pat himself on the back.

“I’m happy people got to see the real Douglas Lima,” he said. “I wanted to show a lot more, though. I want to get better with it every time.

“I was expecting my fight with Chris Lozano to turn into a war. I wanted to keep it standing like I told you guys. If I had the chance to take him down, I would of, but I wasn’t going force too much on a takedown. I’m glad everything worked out the way I said it would.”

As Saunders recently told MMAjunkie.com Radio, he considers Lima a “teammate and neighbor.” Despite living and training in adjacent states, Saunders (Florida) and Lima (Georgia) both technically represent American Top Team. They just belong to different subsections.

Additionally, they’ve never trained together, so Lima can only watch Saunders’ past fights to glean information, and he sees a very good fighter who’s just as equally well-rounded.

Lima, a former MFC titleholder, counts 17 stoppages among his 20 career wins. Although he was slotted to make a WEC appearance in early 2009, visa issues forced off the card. He never did make it to a Zuffa-owned promotion, but now, he’s got an opportunity to win a title shot with arguably the No. 2 promotion in one of its key weight classes.

The victor of Saturday’s tourney finale gets a shot at current undefeated champ Ben Askren, a former NCAA Division I national champion who went from relative MMA obscurity to top-15 consideration in a little more than a year.

For Lima, whose family watches his fights via the Internet back in Brazil, it’s his biggest opportunity yet. And he knows an impressive win is all he needs to capitalize on it.

“My goal with Ben Saunders and just like every fight is to finish no matter what,” he said. “My goal is to go for all three rounds and do my best to finish, and then I will be happy. My main goal is to finish the fight in a good way so people can really see that I am for real.

“I want to send a message with my performance that the title will be mine. I am coming for war. I am ready. I am in shape. I can’t wait to get that title.”

The Latest

In this week’s Trading Shots, Danny Downes and Ben Fowlkes look at Ronda Rousey’s 34-second victory over Bethe Correia at UFC 190 and try to put it into terms that capture the moment without getting swept away by it.

A total of 26 fighters got their chance to shine on Saturday as part of UFC 190 at Rio de Janeiro’s HSBC Arena. Now that UFC 190 is in the books, it’s time to commence MMAjunkie’s “Three Stars” ceremony.

The man known for cranking submissions to the point of injury added eye-gouging to his repertoire. But is the controversy of Rousimar Palhares too essential to his bizarre, awful appeal for his employers to take any meaningful action against him?